7 ms·

Depending on where you're sitting, the US being the greatest superpower hasn't worked out that well either.

by normal_man 8y ago

syrrim 8y ago
The salient point is that china as super power is negative independent of where you're sitting.
- thereare5lights 8y ago
  No it's not. There are plenty of places where it's either neutral or positive outside of China. Russia for one is neutral. Other authoritarian governments would view it as positive/neutral. The salient point is that people here have rose tinted glasses when it comes to the negative effects of American military actions since the Spanish–American War. For the vast majority of the world, America, China, two sides of the same coin. Just another foreign government telling them what to do and taking things from them under the veneer of helping them.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    "Other authoritarian governments would view it as positive/neutral." That ain't exactly helping your case. "Just another foreign government telling them what to do and taking things from them under the veneer of helping them." Right, but one of them is literally a totalitarian dictatorship, and the other is the United States. The US is by every measure the lesser of the two evils.
    - mdpopescu 8y ago
      One of them firebombed Dresden, sold half of Europe to the Russians and used nuclear weapons on civilians. The other one is China.
      - Para2016 8y ago
        Are you comparing 1940's US with 2019's China? Should you not compare 1949 China and Mao with 1940's USA and then compare 2019 US to 2019 China?
      - theandrewbailey 8y ago
        One of them killed tens of millions (!) of their own citizens for having the wrong politics and ideas[0], and continues to "re-educate" them for being members of certain groups[1] and religions[2][3]. The other one is the USA. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_leap_forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_leap_forward [1] https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-07-14/why-china-fears-falun-gong https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-07-14/why-china-fears-falun... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/world/asia/china-xinjiang-uighur-intellectuals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/world/asia/china-xinjiang... [3] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/6/chinas-christian-persecution-highest-level-mao/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/6/chinas-chris...
        thereare5lights 8y ago
        You're not helping your case by lying. The mass deaths in the Great Leap were due to starvation/famine, not death because you had the wrong politics/ideas. Downvoting this post does not making it less true either.
        yellowapple 8y ago
        Per the Wikipedia link: "Frank Dikötter estimates that at least 2.5 million people [who died as a result of the Great Leap Forward] were beaten or tortured to death and one million to three million committed suicide." And regarding the famine: "Yang Jisheng, a long-time communist party member and a reporter for the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, puts the blame squarely on Maoist policies and the political system of totalitarianism,[36] such as diverting agricultural workers to steel production instead of growing crops, and exporting grain at the same time.[82][83] During the course of his research, Yang uncovered that some 22 million tons of grain was held in public granaries at the height of the famine, reports of the starvation went up the bureaucracy only to be ignored by top officials, and the authorities ordered that statistics be destroyed in regions where population decline became evident.[84] " (EDIT: even better: "Benjamin Valentino writes that like in the USSR during the famine of 1932–33, peasants were confined to their starving villages by a system of household registration,[95] and the worst effects of the famine were directed against enemies of the regime.[31] Those labeled as "black elements" (religious leaders, rightists, rich peasants, etc.) in any previous campaign were given the lowest priority in the allocation of food, and therefore died in the greatest numbers.[31] According to genocide scholar Adam Jones, "no group suffered more than the Tibetans", with perhaps one in five dying from 1959 to 1962.[96]") Your posts are likely being downvoted because they're misleading to the point of intellectual dishonesty.
    - house_atr 8y ago
      One is crushing sanctions, millions of bombs, hegemony, instability, invasions, torture and government toppling. The other is China. Totalitarian lol. I get it dude, I understand you. As someone who spent a fair amount of time with westerners I know that someone telling you can't watch a movie or live without the ability to publicly insult a leader is like the worst thing ever, basically a genocide. But there really is another world out there outside of BBC and the Washington Post where people think differently than you.
    - thereare5lights 8y ago
      "That ain't exactly helping your case." My case is amoral. Your dislike of that does not change whether or not my statement is true. "Right, but one of them is literally a totalitarian dictatorship, and the other is the United States. The US is by every measure the lesser of the two evils." You do realize that there other cultures view us in the exact same fervent manner right?
      - yellowapple 8y ago
        If those unnamed other cultures think that the United States - a representative democracy - is equivalent to or worse than China - (again) a totalitarian dictatorship - then those cultures are objectively and factually wrong. They're entitled to their beliefs, but that entitlement does not equal correctness or sanity.
        chillacy 8y ago
        The representative democracy part doesn’t stop the US from backing other repressive regimes around the world, from South America to Vietnam, in order to serve its own interests. The US having a representative government doesn’t seem to make us treat the people of other nations any better.
        thereare5lights 8y ago
        Like I've been saying, so many people here with rose tinted glasses.
        yellowapple 8y ago
        The alternatives to those repressive regimes were... other repressive regimes, or regimes that were guaranteed to become quickly repressive based on the histories of both the USSR and China.
        chillacy 8y ago
        Hah, I think guaranteed might be too strong a word to use in matters of a historical what if. Regardless, you don’t have to convince me as much as people living in those countries that the US is working in their interests. And the optics aren’t good right now.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    Maybe, maybe not. We don't know how China will handle being a world superpower in the future [depending on how you read history you could call various dynasties a world superpower]. Russia has reasons to not like the US, but that doesn't mean they will like China more - that is one reason they are neutral. I could make a case that Russia would prefer the US to China - but it is just an argument, only history will tell how changing world affected Russia. Even history cannot tell us how things would be different in some alternative history.
MichaelMoser123 8y ago
worked out great for Europe, finally they can do without wars!
- nostromo 8y ago
  And they can spend money on transit and healthcare instead of paying for defense.
  - orf 8y ago
    Just like the USA can, if they chose to.
    - DATACOMMANDER 8y ago
      The point is that the US effectively provides national defense for other NATO members without receiving (direct) compensation.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
bilbo0s 8y ago
True. Probably especially true if you're sitting in sub-saharan Africa.

Depending on where you're sitting, the US being the greatest superpower hasn't worked out that well either.

syrrim 8y ago

The salient point is that china as super power is negative independent of where you're sitting.

thereare5lights 8y ago
No it's not. There are plenty of places where it's either neutral or positive outside of China. Russia for one is neutral. Other authoritarian governments would view it as positive/neutral. The salient point is that people here have rose tinted glasses when it comes to the negative effects of American military actions since the Spanish–American War. For the vast majority of the world, America, China, two sides of the same coin. Just another foreign government telling them what to do and taking things from them under the veneer of helping them.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  "Other authoritarian governments would view it as positive/neutral." That ain't exactly helping your case. "Just another foreign government telling them what to do and taking things from them under the veneer of helping them." Right, but one of them is literally a totalitarian dictatorship, and the other is the United States. The US is by every measure the lesser of the two evils.
  - mdpopescu 8y ago
    One of them firebombed Dresden, sold half of Europe to the Russians and used nuclear weapons on civilians. The other one is China.
    - Para2016 8y ago
      Are you comparing 1940's US with 2019's China? Should you not compare 1949 China and Mao with 1940's USA and then compare 2019 US to 2019 China?
    - theandrewbailey 8y ago
      One of them killed tens of millions (!) of their own citizens for having the wrong politics and ideas[0], and continues to "re-educate" them for being members of certain groups[1] and religions[2][3]. The other one is the USA. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_leap_forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_leap_forward [1] https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-07-14/why-china-fears-falun-gong https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-07-14/why-china-fears-falun... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/world/asia/china-xinjiang-uighur-intellectuals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/world/asia/china-xinjiang... [3] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/6/chinas-christian-persecution-highest-level-mao/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/6/chinas-chris...
      - thereare5lights 8y ago
        You're not helping your case by lying. The mass deaths in the Great Leap were due to starvation/famine, not death because you had the wrong politics/ideas. Downvoting this post does not making it less true either.
        yellowapple 8y ago
        Per the Wikipedia link: "Frank Dikötter estimates that at least 2.5 million people [who died as a result of the Great Leap Forward] were beaten or tortured to death and one million to three million committed suicide." And regarding the famine: "Yang Jisheng, a long-time communist party member and a reporter for the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, puts the blame squarely on Maoist policies and the political system of totalitarianism,[36] such as diverting agricultural workers to steel production instead of growing crops, and exporting grain at the same time.[82][83] During the course of his research, Yang uncovered that some 22 million tons of grain was held in public granaries at the height of the famine, reports of the starvation went up the bureaucracy only to be ignored by top officials, and the authorities ordered that statistics be destroyed in regions where population decline became evident.[84] " (EDIT: even better: "Benjamin Valentino writes that like in the USSR during the famine of 1932–33, peasants were confined to their starving villages by a system of household registration,[95] and the worst effects of the famine were directed against enemies of the regime.[31] Those labeled as "black elements" (religious leaders, rightists, rich peasants, etc.) in any previous campaign were given the lowest priority in the allocation of food, and therefore died in the greatest numbers.[31] According to genocide scholar Adam Jones, "no group suffered more than the Tibetans", with perhaps one in five dying from 1959 to 1962.[96]") Your posts are likely being downvoted because they're misleading to the point of intellectual dishonesty.
  - house_atr 8y ago
    One is crushing sanctions, millions of bombs, hegemony, instability, invasions, torture and government toppling. The other is China. Totalitarian lol. I get it dude, I understand you. As someone who spent a fair amount of time with westerners I know that someone telling you can't watch a movie or live without the ability to publicly insult a leader is like the worst thing ever, basically a genocide. But there really is another world out there outside of BBC and the Washington Post where people think differently than you.
  - thereare5lights 8y ago
    "That ain't exactly helping your case." My case is amoral. Your dislike of that does not change whether or not my statement is true. "Right, but one of them is literally a totalitarian dictatorship, and the other is the United States. The US is by every measure the lesser of the two evils." You do realize that there other cultures view us in the exact same fervent manner right?
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      If those unnamed other cultures think that the United States - a representative democracy - is equivalent to or worse than China - (again) a totalitarian dictatorship - then those cultures are objectively and factually wrong. They're entitled to their beliefs, but that entitlement does not equal correctness or sanity.
      - chillacy 8y ago
        The representative democracy part doesn’t stop the US from backing other repressive regimes around the world, from South America to Vietnam, in order to serve its own interests. The US having a representative government doesn’t seem to make us treat the people of other nations any better.
        thereare5lights 8y ago
        Like I've been saying, so many people here with rose tinted glasses.
        yellowapple 8y ago
        The alternatives to those repressive regimes were... other repressive regimes, or regimes that were guaranteed to become quickly repressive based on the histories of both the USSR and China.
        chillacy 8y ago
        Hah, I think guaranteed might be too strong a word to use in matters of a historical what if. Regardless, you don’t have to convince me as much as people living in those countries that the US is working in their interests. And the optics aren’t good right now.
- bluGill 8y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. We don't know how China will handle being a world superpower in the future [depending on how you read history you could call various dynasties a world superpower]. Russia has reasons to not like the US, but that doesn't mean they will like China more - that is one reason they are neutral. I could make a case that Russia would prefer the US to China - but it is just an argument, only history will tell how changing world affected Russia. Even history cannot tell us how things would be different in some alternative history.

MichaelMoser123 8y ago

worked out great for Europe, finally they can do without wars!

nostromo 8y ago
And they can spend money on transit and healthcare instead of paying for defense.
- orf 8y ago
  Just like the USA can, if they chose to.
  - DATACOMMANDER 8y ago
    The point is that the US effectively provides national defense for other NATO members without receiving (direct) compensation.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

bilbo0s 8y ago

True. Probably especially true if you're sitting in sub-saharan Africa.